Automatic Enrolment (Offshore Employment) (Amendment) Order 2020

Baroness Drake Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the order and regulations, which will ensure that eligible seafarers and offshore workers continue to benefit from employer duties to auto-enrol workers into a workplace pension.

Importantly, they confirm a set of three underpinning government decisions. First, the consideration of complexities in a sector or net burden on business, which led to the original sunset clauses, has not been allowed to exclude these workers from auto-enrolment. Secondly, the Government have resisted amending the eligibility test for auto-enrolling these workers, therefore ensuring that the coverage is not diminished. Thirdly, the DWP has held to its 2017 Maintaining the Momentum report, in which it concluded that employer auto-enrolment duties should continue regardless of industry sector and size of employer.

The necessity of emergency and extraordinary financial measures in response to this pandemic can sometimes mask the risk that fundamentals around long-term sustainability get lost, which is why I welcome that the Government have maintained employer auto-enrolment duties and that the job retention scheme allows grants to cover employer statutory minimum pension contributions for millions of furloughed workers. These grants particularly benefit women and young workers, who are much more likely to be working in sectors with the highest incidence of furloughed workers.

It took 16 years to build consensus and fully implement auto-enrolment. Auto-enrolment was born in the last financial crisis with the 2008 Act. If siren voices had prevailed then and the policy had been kicked into the long grass, we would not have secured 10 million more saving and 1.6 million employers participating. It is important that auto-enrolment is maintained during this pandemic crisis, avoiding irrecoverable long-term negative consequences, particularly for younger generations who are already likely to be hit particularly hard by this pandemic.

In conclusion, I ask the Minister for reassurance that the Government are committed to maintaining auto-enrolment duties in the rebuilding of the economy, regardless of the industry sector and size of the employer.